Monday, August 03, 2009

I've been hard on Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson. I mocked his playoff proposal because his big idea seemed to be "Let the MWC into the BCS." I mocked that he ripped the BCS cabal yet subordinated playoff to payoff to remain on the outside looking in.

But, in the face of new evidence, I am going to flip-flop my opinion of Thompson: Good man!

In our conversation, Thompson said he would like to see the Harris and Coaches polls removed from the BCS equation, because they amount to little more than opinion polls, he said. And most of the voters only know about college football what they see on ESPN at the end of their Saturday night....

"I’ve never been a great fan of the opinion polls. That's all they are" Thompson said. "Just the Tim Tebow story from last week is the perfect example. Coaches aren't filling those (ballots) out, and those that do, aren’t they kind of busy on Saturdays?"

For Thompson, the system would best be left up to the computers. I agree 100 percent. Perhaps you have a small selection committee to reality-check the computer data -- like the NCAA Tournament selection committee basically does -- but I like the computers more than the BCS' human components.

(That said: The computer polls need to be WAY more transparent. Every computer-poll administrator should be forced to lay out -- and even defend -- his system. If they don't want to do that, they don't have to be part of the BCS equation.)

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.